Jewish Press Reporter Argues Homosexuals Are "Self-Indulgent," Should Suffer In Silence

"But do [closeted homosexual] Jews complain? Do Catholic priests, the overwhelming majority of whom remain celibate their entire lives, complain? No. They wage their internal battles quietly, recognizing that not every topic need be discussed openly and not every feeling need be publicized and validated. Why, then, can't Orthodox homosexuals do the same? Why can't they struggle silently and heroically as do so many others?… But openly homosexual Orthodox Jews apparently care little about the very essence of what it means to be a servant of God and demand that everyone accept them as they are. Their needs, their wants, their desires are what matters."

 

Orthodox Homosexuals And The Pursuit Of Self-Indulgence
Elliot Resnick • The Jewish Press

   Recently, while doing research for a news article I was writing for The Jewish Press, I found myself watching a YouTube clip concerning Jewish homosexuals. About two minutes into the clip, my heart suddenly dropped. There speaking on my computer screen was a young man I had once known as a sweet frum boy. Today - as I discovered from the YouTube video - he is an open homosexual.
 
   I don't know when this young man - I'll call him Dovid - declared himself a homosexual. As I watched the clip, my mind wandered back to the summer I served as his waiter in camp; when I took him around an amusement park on the camp's grand trip; when he looked to me as his anchor as he dared go on his first roller coaster.
 
   Seeing him speak shamelessly as a homosexual on YouTube pained me. "Why?" I asked Dovid's image on my computer screen, as if he could somehow hear me. "Why must you publicize your orientation for the whole world to know?"

   Being attracted to other men while growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community must be difficult for any young male. And keeping one's struggles private can be lonely and depressing. But are closeted homosexuals the only ones who struggle in solitude and silence? Don't tens of thousands of Orthodox teenagers and young adults - to say nothing of older men and women who never married - struggle silently with their attraction to the opposite sex?
 
   For so many issues, one can attend lectures that offer chizuk and advice. Hardly any for this issue. In so many areas of life one can discuss personal difficulties with friends. Not in this area. Some individuals hint at their struggles to a particular rebbe to whom they feel close, and here and there one may also encounter allusions to this topic in various sefarim. By and large, though, unmarried heterosexual Orthodox Jews suffer in solitude.
 
   But do those Jews complain? Do Catholic priests, the overwhelming majority of whom remain celibate their entire lives, complain? No. They wage their internal battles quietly, recognizing that not every topic need be discussed openly and not every feeling need be publicized and validated.
 
   Why, then, can't Orthodox homosexuals do the same? Why can't they struggle silently and heroically as do so many others?
 
   Instead of complaining that no one understands them, why can't they see their battle as an opportunity to reach unique levels of righteousness? Most contemporary Jewish thinkers view marital relations positively, but Judaism has always had an ascetic streak as well. The Rambam's son, Rabbeinu Avraham, seems to extol the Talmudic sage Ben Azzai and the prophets Eliyahu and Elisha who never married (see chapters 10-12 in his Hamaspik L'Ovdei Hashem). Moshe Rabbeinu of course did marry, but according to the Talmud he never knew his wife intimately after spending 40 days and nights in communion with God. According to this line of thinking, those Jews who find it impossible to marry a woman can arguably reach levels of holiness unattainable by others.
 
   But many Orthodox homosexuals seem uninterested in attaining spiritual greatness or in struggling with their feelings like so many of their brethren. Instead, they declare that we must recognize them. We must acknowledge their desires. We must affirm their feelings.
 
   Why do they demand this recognition?
 
   No single explanation provides a full answer, but contemporary culture deserves a large share of the blame. We live in a self-centered society where the only thing that matters is "me" and "my feelings." Duty is passé. An emotionally stable life has replaced the well-lived life as man's highest goal. As Federal Judge Janice Rogers Brown once said, "To be or not to be is no longer the question. The question is: How do you feel?"
 
   And if subjective feelings rather than objective truth are of paramount importance, why shouldn't homosexuals tell the whole world about their innermost desires? "Why should I hide a part of myself?" they ask. "It's me. It's who I am."
 
   Jewish thought teaches one to be embarrassed of one's failings, to hide one's flaws from man and God, to repress one's base characteristics and desires. To be holy, according to many Jewish thinkers (see, for example, Rashi on Leviticus 19:2), is to avoid prohibited sexual thoughts and deeds. Not for naught did God seal His covenant with the Jewish people with the bris milah. "This is the summons the seal of Abraham brings to you - stifle animal desires at their outset, stifle them at their birth," writes Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in his Horeb. "To keep this seal of the covenant as something holy is fundamental to the eternity of [the Jewish] people."
 
   But openly homosexual Orthodox Jews apparently care little about the very essence of what it means to be a servant of God and demand that everyone accept them as they are. Their needs, their wants, their desires are what matters.

   Will Dovid ever return to being that sweet innocent boy I remember? I don't know. But at the very least, we may be able to prevent others like him from descending down the wrong path if we reexamine our society's self-centered, feelings-based culture and take efforts to transform it to one revolving around virtue, duty, and the divine mandate.

      Elliot Resnick is a Jewish Press staff reporter and a Ph.D. student at Yeshiva University's Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies.

That Elliot Resnik is is stupid enough to think that closeted Orthodox homosexuals are closeted because they don't want to damage the community is astounding. Closeted Orthodox homosexuals are closeted because living openly as a homosexual means in almost every case means the exclusion of that homosexual from the Orthodox/ultra-Orthodox community and a considerable amount of suffering for that homosexual and his family.

Past that, the suffering in silence Resnick advocates results in suicides and addiction problems.

Homosexuality is not a choice and, despite some disreputable claims to the contrary, it can't be "cured."

To attack homosexuals for being homosexual, for refusing to hide their orientation to please Resnick and his ilk, is sick, and his comparison of homosexuals to Catholic priests – who choose the priesthood knowing in advance that it calls for celibacy – is idiotic.

If there is any shame left in the Klass family – and after years of publishing the Jewish Press, I don't see how there could be – it should be ashamed that is pays this man's salary and that it published this horrible column.

Related Post: Gay Orthodox Jews: A Response From “Dovid” To The Jewish Press.

Comments

[masortiman]

"They got married as many do these days had kids and maybe they had/have some flings with other men."

leaving aside the many aveirahs involved that for the man, and leaving aside the pain and humiliation involved for the man, think about the negative consequences (and I dont just mean diseases) that occured to the woman involved in such a marriage.

[Dont Come Knocking!]

Kish Mich-
I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.
The only thing I can imagine funnier than your posts, are the faces of the sensitive, hurt faygalach and girly-men reading it!
Go baby!

[Kish Mich]

Hey listen, Live, laugh, love. If some dude wants to deprive himself of the vaganya that's his problem. All these fags whine that bitchy acceptance crap - go plow your buddy all day and night for all I care, just don't run around looking for acceptance. I'm not as asstoot, or astute, as the accepting liberals here but I do know this - if 100% of men caught the gay disease and only banged other dudes, mankind would be destroyed.

[OMG]

Kish Mich-

Your psychobabble proves that you are an idiot and your understanding of life, in a way equals the Nazi philosophy.

PS why would i kiss you, are you gay?

[Jeff]

shows you what a PhD from yeshiva university is worth

Posted by: Gevezener Chusid | June 21, 2011 at 12:41 PM

Heh! Yeah.

Honestly, it's been my observation in recent years that secular universities are coming to that point as well. Ivy League science departments have been graduating creationists. It seems as though they'll award a PhD to just about anyone today.

[Saddened]

Clearly Elliot is a very lonely and isolated homosexual male. I feel for him and his family ( if he has one) and hope that people kinder and more enlightened help him realize his sexuality and be open and true to himself. Maybe then he can learn to love himself and others instead of using Torah as a means of projecting his insecurity onto others.

And for those of you who state that "Gays are obviously insecure and that is why they flaunt their sexuality", read your bigoted and hateful posts and you will realize that if anyone is insecure of self loathing, you are to blame. You are also to blame for pain and death and hate.

You are entitled to believe what you want but I urge you to dig a little deeper, into academic literature, humanity and even Judaism and recognize your hypocritical and damaging words.

[Mitch Gilbert]

Orthodox teens and gays put new pressures on Orthodox Judasim: “gd Shbs.” It’s me, being me http://exm.nr/k4EVZq

[None]

See this. http://www.kolhamevaser.com/2013/03/shut-down-the-bible-department/

[Nonen]

http://www.kolhamevaser.com/2013/03/shut-down-the-bible-department/